She’s a Nurse and a Flight Attendant — How Hannah Kimmel Balances Two Demanding Careers

All Photos provided via Instagram from @hankimmel

 

This RN is proudly wearing her wings…and her stethoscope. 

Every month, Hannah Hudson Kimmel, 23, BSN, RN (@hankimmel) gets a schedule that lists her shifts as a flight attendant—but she doesn't just stop there. Instead, Kimmel uses her flight schedule as the jumping-off point to add in shifts at her second job as a Registered Nurse. Oh, and if that wasn't enough, don't forget her third and fourth roles as a postnatal retreat nurse and a content creator.

Is your head spinning yet? Don't worry—Kimmel is a pro at juggling a schedule that would make most people dizzy. We talked to the flight attendant-nurse-content creator to find out how she manages all her different roles, all while thriving along the way.

Taking Flight

Kimmel's journey starts fresh out of high school, when she enrolled in an accelerated nursing program shortly after graduation. The fast-paced track she was on didn't leave her a lot of time to contemplate her future, and sometime near the end of the last year, she questioned if nursing was really the path for her.

While she contemplated next steps, her uncle, who worked as a flight attendant, suggested she look into a career in aviation stewardship. Although programs to become a flight attendant are extremely competitive, Kimmel applied, thinking she could take her uncle's advice of working as a flight attendant until she decided what she wanted to do.

"I had always wanted to travel, and he has been everywhere, so he said, 'You should try this,'" Kimmel remembers. "So it made sense, so I just went for it."

As luck would have it, Kimmel was accepted into the flight attendant training program just as she finished her last clinical rotation in nursing. After graduating from nursing school at 20 and starting work as a nurse, she got hired as a flight attendant. The initial training period as a flight attendant is time-intensive, so Kimmel quit her newly acquired nursing job as she trained and learned the ropes of living and working as a flight attendant. 

Eventually, after relocating her entire life, Kimmel decided she didn't have to choose: she would work as both a flight attendant and a nurse. And she's been going strong ever since. 

Today, with a home base of Chicago, Kimmel works as a flight attendant, where she enjoys free flights, and other perks like a "buddy pass" for her best friend to fly for free, free standby tickets for her parents, and additional buddy passes she can hand out to friends and family, as well as discounts on certain hotel chains. 

"Honestly, the biggest perk, I would say, is definitely the free flights," Kimmel admits.

From Scrubs to the Skies

Kimmel's full-time role is as a flight attendant, so she uses her flight schedule as her "main" job. After she gets her schedule, she fills in any empty slots as a nurse. While Kimmel initially had to work full-time as a nurse to gain experience, she has now gone PRN and can pick and choose what shifts to pick up that work around her schedule. 

"I started off on a Med-Surg floor," she explains. "Now I'm PRN and I work all over the hospital in the ICU, ER…I'm trained for everything, so I can go wherever there's availability."

Somewhere in between flying all over the country with Southwest Airlines, picking up PRN shifts, Kimmel happened to come across Fourth Trimester Postnatal Retreat, a first-of-its-kind Chicago company focused on caring for mothers postpartum, while scrolling on Instagram. She was immediately intrigued and reached out to owner Taylor Michelle Ivey. After meeting for lunch, the two hit it off, and Kimmel also started working for her.

In her role as a postnatal retreat nurse—a concept, by the way, that Kimmel explains is relatively new in the U.S. while common in places like Korea and Japan—she is focused on helping new parents get "rested, restored, and rejuvenated." New parents, or just moms and their babies, come stay at the retreat center, receive medical services like IV hydration, education, and health monitoring, along with spa-like care and gourmet meals. 

"It was not something like I ever planned to do, like working with babies or postpartum moms, but it's been great," Kimmel says. "I love bringing that aspect into my nursing career as well."

As if Kimmel wasn't doing enough, she's also delved into the world of nurse injecting, sharing a glimpse into this new role on her Instagram page.

Kimmel Shares Her Life

While Kimmel initially had concerns about becoming a nurse, she tells Nurse.org that she is glad she continued to graduation, even while her work as an RN has evolved and shifted. 

"I love it so much now," she says. "And I tell everyone that I love it so much."

To anyone in a similar position, questioning if nursing is for them or if they should switch out, Kimmel points out that life as a nurse is vastly different than actually working as a nurse. And while she adds that nursing is not for everyone and can be "really, really hard," she says she's been happy with the opportunities it has given her. 

"I love all the other aspects that nursing offers," she says. "I love the flexibility for scheduling. I love the opportunities it has given me. I've met so many amazing people. So, I mean, I really do love it as a career."

Some of those opportunities have stemmed from social media, where Kimmel has carved yet another role for herself, this time as an accidental content creator. Kimmel tells Nurse.org that while she initially only shared her life as both a nurse and a flight attendant with friends and family, she soon realized that what she was doing in her dual roles was a "unique lifestyle."

"I would do three nursing shifts in a row, get home, and then wake up at like, 4 AM the next morning and go and fly and be gone for like, three days," she says. "And on my days off, I was traveling so much. So people were like,' Oh my gosh, that's crazy.'"

She decided to start documenting more of her life and sharing it, a move she says people were "so fascinated" by, but also inspired other nurses to realize that it was something they could do, too. 

Currently, Kimmel has 60.5K followers on Instagram and 11.2K followers on TikTok (@scrubs.and.hubs), although she explains that her TikTok account is in the process of regrowing after being hacked earlier this year. Her socials share her real life as both a flight attendant and nurse, with tips and tricks about traveling and advice for aspiring flight attendants.

Reaching New Heights

As her popularity online has grown, Kimmel says she has started to be recognized in public and open more opportunities from a business standpoint, but admits that the persona of "influencer" doesn't quite feel comfortable to her yet.

"I feel like it's just like a weird concept for me to just even grasp my head around," she says. "You know, it's kind of like imposter syndrome."

Still, she has enjoyed enough success in social media to have an agent who helps manage the business aspects of her accounts, and she's landed some lucrative brand partnerships. But Kimmel is adamant that she is grounded (no pun intended) by her foundation as a nurse.

"In five, six, ten years,  we don't know what social media will be like," she points out. "Whereas, you can always have your nursing degree, and you can always have an actual job. So that's why I work so hard to keep my flight attendant and nursing up, rather than just social media." 

Kimmel juggles a lot, but she is quick to remind her followers that there is more than they see behind the screen, too. 

"I mean, obviously, on social media, my life looks glamorous and so easy, but I have made so many sacrifices to be where I am now,  and I still make sacrifices every day," she describes. "You know, like, I'm required to work holidays, so there's been a lot of holidays and things that I've missed with my family. Obviously, there are sacrifices."

Despite her young age, Kimmel has a wealth of experience under her belt, and she encourages any fellow nurses who are curious about flight attendant school or just looking to add more to their lives to explore what else might be possible. 

"I always tell everyone you have to be organized and ready to make those sacrifices for something if you really want to do it, you know?" she says.

Outside of her many roles as nurse, flight attendant, and content creator, Kimmel also enjoys running (as in, marathon running, if you guessed that) and enjoying new food at the destinations she visits (although she says nowhere in the world makes pizza like Chicago).

"I love to eat at restaurants," she notes. "I'm a big food person."

Hannah ran a marathon in Newport, CT, in October 2024.

Kimmel has plans to further her nursing education in the future, but for now, she is just enjoying her life, traveling, exploring, and staying busy as both a nurse and a flight attendant.

"I would like to just be for a while," she says. 

You can follow more of Kimmel's adventures at @scrubs.and.hubs on TikTok or find her at @hankimmel on Instagram.

🤔Nurses, what do you think about Hannah Kimmel’s unique career? Share your comments in the forum below!